Matthew Abramowitz
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
People with chronic kidney disease (CKD) often lose muscle strength and endurance, which leads to frailty, disability and a higher risk of death. A key cause is poorly working mitochondria, the parts of cells that make energy.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
chronic kidney disease
skeletal muscle
mitochondrial dysfunction
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2028
What they work on
- Measure how much muscle mitochondrial energy production is impaired in patients with severe, non-dialysis CKD, using CEST MRI to track phosphocreatine recovery before and after plantar flexion exercise.
- Determine whether muscle oxidative capacity measured by CEST MRI predicts physical function impairment independently of muscle atrophy, fibrosis and fat infiltration in a deeply characterized CKD cohort.
- Assess whether dynamic CEST MRI adds prognostic information beyond static quantitative MRI measures of skeletal muscle health in patients with advanced CKD.
More about the research
Measuring how well muscle mitochondria work in living patients could flag who is at risk before their physical function declines. The standard test, phosphorus-31 magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P-MRS), needs special hardware and expertise, so few centers can run it.
Why it matters
A quick, widely available scan of muscle energy production could help identify people with chronic kidney disease who are heading toward frailty before their decline is obvious. Such a test could support targeted exercise programs, make multicenter clinical trials easier to run, and expand testing of therapies aimed at mitochondria.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Fahad Saeed
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether the CKD-EDU palliative care intervention, a decision aid plus palliative clinician coaching, reduces decisional conflict at one month in patients aged 75 or older with advanced CKD.
Qandeel Soomro
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Deeply profile autonomic nervous system dysfunction across stages of chronic kidney disease using a comprehensive battery of autonomic tests, both cross-sectionally and over time, to test whether dysfunction shifts from parasympathetic to sympathetic as CKD advances.
Ulf Bronas
Georgetown University, DC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether a 6-month home-based walking program improves executive function and other areas of thinking in 116 older adults with chronic kidney disease and mild cognitive impairment, compared with an attention control group.
The school
Albert Einstein College of Medicine: 21 labs on PI Pages, $361M a year on research, 36 research doctorates a year.
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